monsters

I've rolled a few twenty-sided dice in my time, so believe me when I tell you that I know the crucial elements of a successful dungeon crawl. You need heroes, obviously, and monsters are always good (in the event that your players have threatened you with physical violence if you just put them in another gigantic room full of deathtraps), and you obviously need a dungeon to contain all this hero versus monster combat.

And, as artist Sean Poppe is sure to point out with his gallery, you also need nachos. Lots and lots of nachos. Check below to see his incredible D&D-inspired art and a recipe for delicious tortilla-based snacks below!

Jason Fischer aka JFish has got his monsters on his mind and his mind on his monsters -- and he's transporting them to paper with Monstroleum: Monsters of the Dragon's Keep, a five-volume encyclopedia of sorts covering the characteristics of 55 total foes (11 per volume) that readers might encounter on a dungeon crawl. But that's not all. To expedite the process, JFish is offering three tiers of subscription preorders that will put even more mythological menaces in the hands of his fans.

Q: Would you rather your vampires and other monsters explained through magic, religious, or scientific contexts? --@CineastBenRowe

A: You know, Benny, I was all set to dive into another question I had this week about what was the best Ghost-Type Pokémon, but the more I looked at the questions I was getting, the more this one stuck in my head. I guess you could say it... haunted me. Haunted me like a Gengar, which, while actually a dual-type Ghost/Poison Pokémon, definitely qualifies and is really pretty awesome and creepy when you start reading all the stuff about how it was originally intended to be a ghostly doppelganger of Clefairy back before kids decided that they liked Pikachu about a thousand percent more than any other Pokémon. I've had a keychain of one since the tenth grade.

Oh, right, your thing. It won't surprise you that I have a pretty definitive answer, but it might surprise you to find out what that answer is.

Q: What makes a monster a Halloween monster? Why is Dracula okay but Godzilla is not? -- @chudleycannons

A: If you're following me on Twitter, then you may already know that earlier this week, I got into a heated argument with comic book writer and holiday enthusiast Benito Cereno over what does and does not constitute a "Halloween Monster." The whole thing sprang out of a Halloween-themed musical countdown that Benito's doling out over at his Tumblr -- stick around to find out how the Garfield Halloween special got him in trouble as a youngster -- that included Blue Oyster Cult's "Godzilla."

My argument -- which I posed to my ex-friend in a very civil and conversational manner that definitely did not start with "hey stupid" -- was that this song wasn't a good fit because Godzilla, while he is definitely a monster, doesn't fit thematically with Halloween. Benito's argument was that it was a fun song. But obviously, as we all know, you can't have fun without rules.

New Year: Happy 2013, everybody... except mutants. According to the classic "Days of Future Past" storyline by Chris Claremont and John Byrne (specifically Uncanny X-Men #141, originally released on Janu

Outside of "snow day" and "free cupcakes," I'm not sure there are many pairs of words in the English language as wonderful as "happy monster." It's probably thanks to a childhood spent on Sesame Street, but there's something about goofy, smiling monsters that just makes me grin. But I'm

Chris: Hello everyone, and welcome to this week's installment of Spider-Man Japan, our unnecessarily in-depth series on Toei's 1978 live-action Supaidaman show! This week... I think the only word that even

Despite the fact that I'm a big fan of a lot of the people involved in creating it, I've never actually seen an episode of Cartoon Network's Ben 10. I am, however, pretty sure that I get the basic idea behind the show. It's about absolutely horrifyi

A few weeks ago I was talking to Aaron of Awesomed By Comics, and he described a film as being like Sid and Marty Kroft making a Japanese horror movie for children, and then told me that it was something I had to see. And he was right on all counts.

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